Geoff Eley's and Keith Nield's essay is marked by a tensionbetween a desire to update the old social history by detaching it from itsmaterialist assumptions on the one hand and a commitment to continue writingnarratives of working-class political agency on the other. By insisting thatclass is still the best way of analyzing inequality and mobilizing resistance toit, the authors foreclose other possibilities for thinking about contemporarypolitics and for writing critical history. They do not ask the questions thatneed to be asked, which are, What are the operative political categories capableof moving masses of people into agency? and, What terms might be used torepresent inequalities of distribution? These questions don't exclude classbut they don't require it either; they also allow for a more open andprobing approach than is offered by Eley and Nield.